Shovel Knight Developer Breaks Down Its Impressive Sales Numbers

A new blog from Yacht Club games, the developer behind Shovel Knight, breaks down the game's sales in detail.

You will find all kinds of interesting information like Yacht Club's estimates for sales, how it arrived at those numbers, how much it approximately cost to make the game in full, and how the game sold.

In short, Shovel Knight exceeded Yacht Club's estimations. Despite launching at full price during the summer Steam sale on PC, and against Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U, the game sold about 75,000 copies during its first week. PC players bought the most copies at 38% during that first week, with 3DS players taking up 35% of sales, and Wii U taking up 27%. After its Kickstarter, Yacht Club assumed PC buyers would swamp the Nintendo buyers, but it was a pretty close race overall. After a month of availability, the game has cracked 180,000 copies sold.

Our TakeThese kinds of statistics are super fascinating, especially since very few developers or publishers are willing to share them. I count myself among the 35% of 3DS players (I go handheld when I have the option), and I had a great time with the game. I'm excited the team has seen success and I can't wait to see what it has in store for the future.

I see lotta people holding out hope that Shovel Knight will make it to other platforms. I am under the impression that Nintendo bought the rights and the company to make a U exclusive. Can anyone clarify? If true then it will be a long while before we see this title on other platform.
I also have this gut feeling that part of Aldeman's departure is the way Ninty is handling the Indie market. I can't help feeling like Ninty might be going about this like MS was with Bungie and Rare. As in shoehorning them into creating one type of game for the rest of their contract. Here is hoping we get to see other titles and allow the devs to grow into something worthy for Nintendo.

This is good to hear. The developers did a great job with Shovel Knight. It isn't just a cheap and lazy nostalgia trip, but rather a game made out of love for the 8 and 16-bit glory days of gaming. It's a delightful mix of everything we love about retro and modern games alike, and I'm happy the developers profited off the title. I'm definitely keeping my eye on Yacht Club Games in the future.

I would just like to take this opportunity to tell the Steamdorks of the world (of which I am one) to eat a big fat one.
Sure we buy all these dumb games for four to seven dollars, never play them, and where does that get the developer?
I'm proud to have paid fifteen full dollars for my Wii U version of Shovel Knight AND have played it (though I haven't beat it yet). It's awesome. Yacht Club games is awesome, and Shovel Knight is way more polished and professional than just about every other indie title on Steam.
I wish them all the luck in the world on their next project. But looking at the numbers, the indie fad is not going to last long. This has got to be the worst business model ever. Without some way of generating solid revenue, the vast bulk of these developers are either going to have to give up game development altogether, or crawl back to the AAA world they left with hat in hand.